The Kansas Turnpike Authority warned that scammers are sending fake text messages to solicit money under the guise of late toll road fees.

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and the Kansas Turnpike Authority are warning residents about another scam circulating via text message regarding bogus toll collections.

An employee with the sheriff’s office received multiple texts last week about unpaid tolls with a link to a fake Kansas Turnpike Authority website, according to a post on social media. The first clue that the texts were fake was that they came from a Hotmail email account and not the KTA.

photo by: Douglas County Sheriff’s Office

A text message received by an employee of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office warning of bogus toll road fees.

The KTA has also warned about the scam on social media and through its own official website: ksturnpike.com

The scam messages encourage residents to click a link in the text message directing them to fake KTA websites or its tolling site, www.driveks.com, but with changes to the web addresses.

The KTA warns residents that it does not send unsolicited texts or emails and that if people do receive a message about their toll balance it is because they have signed up for notifications. The KTA said that an official text from the KTA about tolling would require residents to sign in to their driveks.com account.

The KTA’s warning said that the scam can fool residents into clicking on fake links and paying money to the scammers because the texts use language like “final notice, avoid penalties,” which scares people into acting quickly without verifying the text message’s source.

The sheriff’s office instructed residents not to click on any links that they receive in text messages and to always check to see if a text message is legitimate by reaching out to the state agency involved. The office also asks that residents report the messages as “junk or spam” using the phone’s spam-managing abilities, or residents can forward the text to 7726 (SPAM), then delete the original text.

The KTA and the sheriff’s office instruct residents to report the text messages to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.

photo by: Kansas Turnpike Authority

Examples of fake text messages sent to Kansas residents trying to solicit money for bogus toll road fees.